Only 100 Criminals Are Responsible For The World's Cybercrime

Troels Oerting, head of the division spoke on the BBC Tech Tent show and revealed that while the number seemed low the task ahead was huge due to the fact that inherently cybercrime is borderless.

"We can still cope but the criminals have more resources and they do not have obstacles. They are driven by greed and profit and they produce malware at a speed that we have difficulties catching up with."

Oerting confirmed that the large majority of the 'kingpins' in that group were based in Russian-speaking countries. Relations between Europol and the Russian security services are only just beginning to improve.

Despite this the head of the Cybercrime Centre remains positive after a trip had resulted in progress being made with four of the big cybercrime cases that his team is currently working on.

While progress is good Oerting warned that 'this is not a static number, it will increase unfortunately,' going on to point out that 'criminals no longer come to our countries, they commit their crimes from a distance and because of this I cannot use the normal tools to catch them.'